Wednesday, November 12, 2025

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• Collaborative and Connected Research Panel set for November 26
• 480 student-athletes named to 2024-2025 Academic Honour Roll
• Teaching and Learning Conference 2026 issues call for proposals

• Exploring solutions to the housing crisis

• Public lecture unpacks the myths, medicine, and motivations of obesity
• Wednesday's notes

Collaborative and Connected Research Panel set for November 26

A message from the Office of Research.

University of Waterloo faculty, staff, and graduate students are invited to the November panel of the Collaborative and Connected Research Panel Series, hosted by the Office of the Vice-President, Research and International and the Faculty of Health.

The event will bring together current department chairs and school directors to discuss how to build collaborative and co-operative relationships. The conversation will focus on building collaboration in research and educational settings, including how collaboration can enable new forms of professional relationships and generate creativity. The panel will also address the fact that collaborative and co-operative programming requires effort and focused leadership during institutional transitions.

The panelists are:

• Lisa Aultman-Hall, Professor and Chair, Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo
• Jasmin Habib, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo
• Ellen MacEachen, Professor and Director, School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo

The panel will be moderated by Kelly Grindrod, Associate Professor of Pharmacy and Associate Director, Clinical Education, University of Waterloo.

Suzan Ilcan, Professor and University Research Chair, Sociology and Legal Studies, is lead organizer of the panel series.

The event will take place on Wednesday, November 26, 3 to 4:25 p.m. (panel), 4:30 to 5 p.m. (reception) in the Tatham Centre (TC) 2218.

Please register to attend as seating is limited and registration will close when capacity is reached.

480 student-athletes named to 2024-2025 Academic Honour Roll

Mathias Onuska, Liam Fedak, Olivier Quesnel, Rebecca Brown, and Kathrine Langille. Photo by Steve Brown.

This article was originally published on the Athletics and Recreation website.

Warriors Athletics and Recreation is congratulating the 480 student-athletes who were included on the 2024-2025 Academic Honour Roll with an academic average of 80 per cent or higher. 

This total marks an increase of 36 from last year and represents 59 per cent of the Warriors student-athlete body. 26 of 36 varsity teams had over 50 per cent of their roster named to the Academic Honour Roll. 

Student-athletes in attendance at Fed Hall on November 3 were treated to a complimentary breakfast. Former varsity swimmer and current Coordinator, Competitive Clubs & Aquatics Karin Browne MCed the event, with guest speakers Olivier Quesnel and UW Vice President, Academic and Provost Dr. Thomas Duever. 

Quesnel was a member of the Warriors men's basketball team from 2002-2007 and is now the Vice President and Chief Actuary at Fairfax Financial. Fairfax Financial has supplied funding for the Fairfax Financial Academic All-Canadian Awards since 2012, providing a $1,000 Athletic Financial Award (AFA) to each of the top two male and top two female undergraduate academic performers.  

The Fairfax Financial Academic All-Canadian Awards recipients this year were Liam Fedak, Rebecca Brown, Mathias Onuska, and Kathrine Langille, with Fedak and Brown earning the distinction of top male and female undergraduates. 

An Honours Science major, Fedak earned an outstanding 96.9 per cent academic average as well as taking home the OUA men's hockey EDI Award of merit. 

Brown, an Honours Co-op Psychology, Research Intensive Specialization student, earned a 95.8 per cent academic average and was named an OUA Figure Skating All-Star. 

Onuska scored high percentages on and off the ice, as he was named the OUA and U SPORTS Goaltender of the Year and earned a 96.7 per cent academic average in the Honours Health Sciences program. 

Langille earned a 95.3 per cent academic average in the Biomedical Engineering program while helping the Warriors Women's Squash team to an OUA bronze medal. 

Teaching and Learning Conference 2026 issues call for proposals

A message from the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE).

Submit a proposal for the University of Waterloo’s Annual Teaching and Learning Conference, taking place April 30, 2026. Our 2026 conference theme is “The Human Factor: Shaping the Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education”.

For our 17^th annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference, we will focus on the role of AI in teaching and learning and our role in shaping its use in higher education; whether novices or experts, we have the power to shape AI’s role on our campus, by asking questions, sharing insights, and creating meaningful learning experiences. We ask: How best do we embed AI tools into our courses, and champion new approaches to teaching and assessments of learning to better address the learning needs of our students? When best do we prioritize foundational knowledge and skills versus higher-order learning outcomes? In what ways can we enhance student belonging and authentic emotional and intellectual connections? And how might we work together with AI to improve education? How do we maintain the integrity of assessments, given tools that can complete various assignments are almost undetectable? How do we continue championing accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion with Large Language Models (LLMs) that are biased and exclude important voices?  

We invite you to submit proposals for presentations, panel discussions, workshops, alternative sessions, and posters that address these questions. We also welcome proposals from recipients of Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grants. Again, this year, we invite proposals for pre-conference workshops and panels which will be held online prior to the conference on Wednesday, April 29, 2026.

For more information check out the Call for Proposals website.

Exploring solutions to the housing crisis

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Environment website.

Have we been asking the wrong questions about the housing crisis?

A new documentary by Dr. Brian Doucet in the School of Planning investigates, asking: what if it’s not just a question of how much housing, but what kind of housing and for whom? 

Thinking Beyond the Market is about genuinely affordable housing and takes a cross-Canada look at the programs and projects that are already happening and creating a positive impact on addressing the housing crisis. From using public land to build non-market housing in Kitchener and Whistler, and inspiring Indigenous-led projects in Vancouver, to strong tenant protections and rent control in British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, the examples featured demonstrate how many solutions are making a difference in communities big and small. Interviews with policymakers, developers, residents and housing advocates inspire and challenge viewers to think about both the root causes of the housing crisis and transformative solutions.

“I’ve long worked to bring my academic research into broader public, political, planning and policy conversations,” he said. “The ability to make a documentary film about housing is the ultimate way to bridge the ever-increasing divide between university scholarship and the people who make, shape and experience cities. I hope this film enhances existing conversations and begins new ones in communities across Canada and beyond.”

At Waterloo, Dr. Doucet’s work critically examines housing, gentrification, displacement, transportation and neighbourhood change. Born and raised in Toronto, he lived in the Netherlands from 2004 to 2017, where he received his PhD in geography from Utrecht University in 2010. Since returning to Canada in 2017, he has held a Canada Research Chair, been awarded six major SSHRC research grants and was a 2025 winner of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Teaching Excellence Award. He is the co-author of the award-nominated book, Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto: a visual analysis of change, and a co-editor of the four volume book series Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities, both of which sought to bring academic insights into broader debates.

The next screening of Thinking Beyond the Market is happening at the Princess Twin Cinema in Waterloo on Sunday, November 16 at 12:30 p.m. with subsequent showings in Newmarket, Halifax and an international screening in Zlin, Czechia.

Register for the event.

Public lecture unpacks the myths, medicine, and motivations of obesity

Obesity is more than a number on a scale — it's a complex health issue. On Thursday, November 13, join the School of Pharmacy for a panel discussion and Q&A that will aim to inform, inspire, and shift the narrative around obesity. The expert panelists representing medicine, nutrition and pharmacy will dispel common myths, explore current treatments, and discuss how motivation and mindset play a role in care.

The panellists include:

• Dr. Jennifer Dignam, a family physician specializing in obesity medicine at the Waterloo Medical Weight and Wellness Clinic;
• Dr. JM Gamble, a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo in the School of Pharmacy; and
• Emma Schillings, a Registered Dietitian who specializes in obesity care and behaviour change therapy.

Moderating the event will be Dr. Kelly Grindrod, associate professor and associate director of clinical education at the School of Pharmacy.

The event takes place Thursday, November 13, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the School of Pharmacy. 

Register today for this free event.

Wednesday's notes

"On Saturday, November 8 we engaged with more than 19,000 registered guests at Fall Open House!" Marketing & Undergraduate Recruitment (MUR) reports. "Fall Open House is our largest on-campus recruitment event of the cycle. Prospective students and their supporters got to participate in information fairs, sessions, and tours across all of our campuses. Thank you to all who helped to make this event a success!”

"Conrad Grebel University College cordially invites you to the 2025 Sawatsky Lecture on Wednesday, November 19 at 7:30 p.m." says a note from Conrad Grebel. "The speaker is Rev. Dr. Braxton D. Shelley, the George Washington Williams Professor of Music, of Sacred Music, and of Divinity at Yale University, where he is also faculty director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church. This lecture explores the worldview — the history, aesthetics, and theology — that gives rise to Black gospel music. Surveying a diverse array of gospel selections, this presentation will clarify what this tradition shares: the belief that musical sound can turn spiritual power into a physical reality."

As part of the visiting scholarship activity, members of the University community are also invited to attend a Gospel Music Workshop hosted by Rev. Dr. Shelley on Thursday, November 20 at 7:30 p.m. in the Grebel Chapel.

Information Systems & Technology (IST) has published the latest in the Atlassian blog series entitled Reporting Made Easy: Using Jira’s Built-in Reports and JQL Power.